Contemporary hard disk drives employ a voice coil motor pivoting about an actuator pivot to position one or more sliders over rotating disk surfaces. Each slider is supported a very short distance above its rotating disk surface by an air bearing formed by the flow of air through the gap between the air bearing surface of the slider and the disk surface. The slider is positioned at a pitch angle to disk surface, with the trailing edge being closest to it and the front edge furthest. Near the trailing edge, the read-write head operate to access the data typically stored in a track of the disk surface. It is well known that the air bearing surfaces tend to accumulate contaminants during the life cycle of a hard disk drive. As these contaminants accumulate, there is a growing probability of performance degradation of the read-write head in accessing the data.
What is needed is a better understanding of the causes of contamination and methods and/or mechanisms that limit or control these causes, thereby improving the reliability of the hard disk drive as a whole.